Tag Archives: Soldotna AK Real Estate

You’ve done it: found what’s soon to become your family’s new Soldotna Real Estate home! It’s in a great neighborhood…reasonable commute…decent kitchen (size is right; definitely upgradeable). All this and it fits the budget! Congrats! Looks like your housing hunt is over… YET…before you sign on the dotted line, there should be one last check-off. Factor in all the costs that improving the house to your liking will entail. The cost of home improvements in Soldotna can be light—but since that’s not always the case, there are areas where the possible impact on your bottom line can be meaningful. For instance: Anyone who has had the experience of paying for new fencing—even for just a … Continue reading →

A newly-updated NAR survey confirms that 51% of agents with smartphones use iPhones. This fact is hardly startling, since these phones have been such a boon to the real estate business. Today’s agent can use apps to quickly scan and electronically sign documents, instantly get property details for clients, access key boxes—it’s almost hard to remember how we got along before! But what about the 9% of homeowners who choose to go the FSBO (For Sale by Owner) route? As many a do-it-yourself home seller has learned, just planting a sign in the front yard does not constitute much of a marketing campaign. For those who will be selling an Soldotna Real Estate home this … Continue reading →

“At the end of the day…” “The bottom line…” “When all is said and done…” The final verdict on whether any activity is ultimately deemed a triumph comes down to how successfully it addresses future circumstances. It’s especially relevant when you find yourself at the outset of searching for a new Solotna Real Estate home. That’s not always as easy as you might think. The pressures of the moment (especially when the change of residence is mandated by outside factors—like a job transfer or quickly approaching school registration deadline)—can loom so large that when you find a house that’s perfect for the family now, second thoughts about the distant future don’t even surface. Better idea: … Continue reading →

With spring in the air, you don’t have to have your Kenai Real Estate home for sale to catch the spring cleaning bug. Whether or not you’ve been cooped up inside for a longer-than-usual siege of the wintertime blues, as soon as the weather turns the corner, there seems to be a natural urge to open the windows and start freshening your place up. Spring also brings the traditional hot selling season, and if you’re among those getting ready to list your own home for sale to take advantage of it, you’ll want to add extra attention to the traditional cleanup. Home for sale or not, you can channel some of your annual sprucing-up energy … Continue reading →

Despite the winter’s chilling effect on all sorts of sales, February saw single family homes, condominiums and townhomes selling nationwide at a full 7% increase over a year earlier. The opposite is true of foreclosures—no surprise, since the health of the market means fewer serious borrower delinquencies, hence fewer foreclosures. Even so, Alaska Real Estate foreclosures are still available, possibly because some of the fiercest competition may be tailing off. Real estate watcher RealtyTrac finds that the institutional investor buying spree appears to be losing steam—which could be very good news for individuals interested in purchasing foreclosures. Typically, Kenai Real Estate foreclosures are listed on an as-is basis — and that means exactly what it … Continue reading →

It’s another aftereffect of the rise in housing prices: piggyback loans in Alaska Real Estate are making a comeback. According to a recent American Bankers Associations Report, the number of piggyback loans originated across the nation more than doubled within the past year. A piggyback loan involves taking out two mortgages simultaneously, with a home equity loan (aka “second mortgage”) ‘piggybacking’ on a first mortgage. In Kenai Real Estate home purchases, piggyback loans typically come into play when the buyer is unable to provide a full 20% deposit. Normally this would necessitate the buyer having to take out private mortgage insurance (PMI), which can be pricey. By going with the piggyback loan alternative, the Loan … Continue reading →

Right at the start of the year, Google announced a surprising move. It said it was purchasing a home appliance maker most of us had never even heard of…for $3.2 billion in cash! It was a gambit that every Soldotna Real Estate homeowner should note, because it signals where some very smart money is headed: right where we live! Remember, Google isn’t just famous for its search engine; it’s also frequently in the news for its forays into any number of futuristic enterprises (those mysterious barges, for instance). The appliance maker that now has Google’s billions in its pocket is called Nest Labs, Inc. Nest makes smart devices that reinvent the traditional ones every Alaska … Continue reading →

Kenai real estate investors come from every kind of background, but all share a common trait: they like to think ahead. For that reason, investors eyeing Alaska Real Estate apartment building prospects may want to take a close look at what’s going on with the Millennial generation. For those of us who are a bit uncertain about which group is considered “Generation Y” and which are “Millennials,” there’s a reason for that. Both terms refer to the same group—everyone born between 1977 and 2000. And whatever you call them, they are a very important demographic. According to some statistics, they are 80,000,000 strong! That makes them a larger demo than Baby Boomers, and 20% larger … Continue reading →

In advertising, they call the photo that glamorizes a product its ‘hero shot.’ In the case of a real estate listing in Alaska Real Estate, the pictures that accompany the written description can all be hero shots, if enough care is taken. In one Auburn University study (The Relationship between Property Price, Time-on-Market, and Photo Depictions in a Multiple Listing Service), it was found that adding a single photograph to a listing could lift the final sale price by as much as 3.9%. That’s not surprising, but what is noteworthy is that each additional listing photograph added several hundred dollars to the final selling price. In other words, it’s not just the curbside photo at … Continue reading →

With spring already upon us, we stand at the threshold of Alaska Real Estate’s first major selling season of 2014. If you are preparing to add your own property to the Kenai Real Estate home listings, the International Association of Home Staging Professionals would like to draw your attention to some statistics that bolster their members’ proposition. None is more compelling than this one: non-staged homes remain 79 days longer on market than their professionally-staged neighbors. Still, since not everyone hires a professional staging company to work their magic, you’d think there would be a few DIY alternatives that would well worth doing. Of course, there are: and some go beyond the most well-known staging … Continue reading →